First GTA-wide conference on alternative schools will also consider Manadarin/English bilingual schools and one featuring child-led learning.

The GTA has a tradition of developing alternative schools that is unique in the world, says Esther Fine, an associate professor at York University who organized this weekend's conference with OISE professor Nina Bascia.

By:Patty WinsaUrban Affairs Reporter, Published on Fri Nov 16 2012

Twenty or so parents are sitting in the library of Perth Public School in the city’s Junction area, talking about their plans to start an alternative school.

Everyone is seated cooperatively in a circle that moves out organically to allow latecomers to join in.

There is no hierarchy here, much like the child-led school the group hopes to launch in the Toronto District School Board next year, in Ward 9, called Woven Education Alternative.

And if the group goes the distance, through a near two-year process that includes a rigorous assessment by the board, it’s likely the parents will be successful.

The Toronto public board, like many in the GTA, has a rich history of supporting alternative schools.

“At one point there were more alternative schools in the Toronto board (pre-amalgamation) than there were throughout the rest of Ontario and maybe even Canada,” says Sandra Best, alternative schools liaison development manager for the TDSB.

“There will be people there from 40 years ago in alternatives,” says Best, including founders such as Malcolm Levin, who is sometimes referred to as the grandfather of alternative schools and who joined forces with other parents to start two schools in North York starting in the late 1960s.

That kind of history makes alternative schooling in the GTA unique in the world, says Esther Fine, an associate professor at York University in the Faculty of Education. Fine organized the conference with OISE professor Nina Bascia.

“What is very unique is that there are so many and that they are part of our public school system,” says Fine, who along with Bascia, was commissioned by the Toronto Catholic board to study alternative schools in eight GTA boards.

“There are alternative schools in cities all over the world, but not in great numbers,” she says. The report to the board was finished last year.

Toronto public trustee Chris Bolton will open the conference with an outline of the four proposals that are currently before the public board. They include Woven as well as two Mandarin and English bilingual elementary schools, one downtown and the other in the northeast section of the city.

The fourth proposal is the Oasis Skateboard Academy, a program that relates every subject taught to skateboards or street art. The founders of the program, which is run out of the Oasis Alternative Secondary School, are looking for full alternative school status.

Most alternative schools share space and administration in established schools, where there may be room because of declining enrolment. Per-student funding is covered by the province so the schools don’t cost more to operate.

Parents, and sometimes teachers, propose the schools, but boards support them not only as a way to attract students, but to foster different types of learning.

The “impetus is to be able to offer opportunities that will be more inclusive and more welcoming to a variety of learning styles and approaches,” as well as “reinvigorate the system,” says Bolton, who sits on the board’s Alternative Schools Advisory Committee.

The plan for Woven is a Reggio-Emilia-inspired school, a style of child-led teaching for preschoolers that began in Italy following WWII.

The school wants to use the philosophy in a kindergarten to Grade 6 setting. Woven will also offer a bridge program two mornings a week for kids who are home-schooled, which has never before been offered in the board.

“I thought tying those two things together would be something that would be really different for the Toronto District School Board,” says Marina Unger, a parent and former ECE teacher who came up with the idea. Unger submitted the proposal to the board in September.

The school would follow the Ontario curriculum but, instead of teacher-led discussions, lesson plans will evolve based on the children’s interests.

“It doesn’t mean children run the curriculum, but instead of sitting them down and overtly teaching them something, you kind of make propositions or invitations to specific topics,” says Unger. “It’s really driven by children. They become much more actively involved in the learning.”

The teaching method already has a long record of success at Toronto’s prestigious Jackman Institute of Child Study Laboratory School, a private facility that costs more than $15,000 a year per student.

The school, which is also the training ground for U of T master’s of education students, has been following a similar philosophy of child-centred teaching for 87 years.

“The process takes more time, but the result is that the kids are more engaged,” says principal Elizabeth Morley. “One of the most important research findings in the last decade is the role of engagement in children’s success with learning.

“Really, we’re the very same as adults. We would rather be involved in something, and we’ll throw ourselves into it, than simply be told.”

But many public school teachers use the same method, she says.

“I am not a person who feels child-centred learning is something that would be impossible to find in a very good school,” says Morley. “And public schools are often amongst our very best schools.”

Conference organizer Esther Fine first started researching alternative schools 20 years ago, when she did a video study for three years at the Downtown Alternative school on Lower Jarvis St. The school emphasizes peace-making and conflict resolution.

When she did follow-up interviews 12 years later, she was surprised by the profound difference the school made in the kids’ lives.

“They talk about the details of their early schooling in a way that really surprised me,” says Fine, who currently works with student teachers. “I have them do a lot of work on their early schooling and I don’t get those kinds of positive memories from very many students.”

The conference runs on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4:20 p.m. at Ryerson’s Oakham House, 55 Gould St. It continues Sunday from 10 a.m. to noon.

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